I'm glad to see that all of you had the leisure to natter away over here on MOAB all day while some of us were away at work. But one of us now have a new toy tool. The laptop has been assigned, the docking station has been set up. I will enjoy exploring the possibilities. My old laptop, retired years a go, was light years behind this. And only about a dozen years separate them.

Is there anyone keeping track of other very long threads out there in cyberspace? If we send a note to NPR do you think Nina Totenberg or Michele Norris will interview any of us? Our luck they'd end up talking to Chongo or Shane, wouldn't it?

Hey I sent the Real Inside Story on Bruce Murdoch's Revival and Official Comeback to personal connections at NPR's national desk. I guess they passed it on to the music editors, but not a note of response did I receive. I am most disappointed.

Maybe they are not the Liberals they pretend to be? Do you suppose NPR has been co-opted by... by... RAPAIRE???????

Our Library is doing a series of radio interviews with people of interest. They will be broadcast on our Library's radio show over KISU, our local NPR station and later posted to our Library website. KISU simulcasts over the web at www.kisu.org.

So far we have broadcast an interview with Dana Stabenow (whose latest book was published Feb. 17 and is on the NYT Best Seller list). We have "SURE!" responses from a bunch of people.

Dates have been set for recording Bob Nelson, JA Jance, Kendall Morse, and Bruce Murdoch. Others who have agreed to it are Peter Westbrook and some flash-in-the-pan dude named Tom Paxton. We're negotiating with Richie Havens and Ursula K. Le Guin. We've contacted Barbara Brackman.

There will be others.

If you don't know these people you should find out who they are.

One step at a time, slowly, slowly, The Revolution creeps forward. If you are not with us you are against us. If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem: Up Against The Wall!

The problem is, it's hard to tell when you are talking some serious sh*t; or whether the sh*t you are talking is serious.

If you HAVE managed to line up that list of people for radio interviews - WOW! But if you haven't, well, I'm not going to embaress myself by enthusing over it when you could be pulling both legs and an arm. I figure Jacqui can take care of you in that case, for taking kendall's name in vain.

Westbrook was born to an African-American father and a Japanese mother, who had met while his father was stationed at a military base in Japan.

Westbrook grew up in New Jersey, where he often fought at school until his mother put him in a fencing class. For college, he attended New York University on a full scholarship, and graduated in 1975. In 1973 he won the NCAA fencing championships in sabre. + He won gold medals at the Pan American Games in 1983 and 1995, silver medals in 1979 and 1987, and a bronze medal in 1975. He won a bronze medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was a member of 5 other Olympic teams as well.

Since his retirement he founded the Peter Westbrook Foundation in New York City, which aims to guide inner-city youth away from gang violence through participation in fencing. "

One should be on guard against confusing foils with foibles, old fellow. But I applaud you for bringing Deckman into play, no matter how fancy the footwork needed to do it. He, at least, is consistently a gentleman of the finest school.

I see no advance in your attitude, sirrah. You are worthy of being simultaneously on-piste and piste-on, while I am roundly piste-off at your concatenated irascibilities and assaults. May your body-wire end up roundly entangled in your breeches and all your employees break ground in cadence at your advance.

I shouldn't have been so mean and I apologize. Amos, you don't have to fleche yourself no matter how funny you'd look.

It's the pain in my shoulder. (True stuff:) I have a tear in the rotator cuff of my left shoulder and I had my first round of physical therapy just a couple hours ago. We're doing PT to see if surgery can be avoided.

PErhaps you will end up Dublin your indemnity by blowing the candles out. Or Dublin your pleasure, but not your pain, I hope.

I always knew this was a mean joint. You can tell--it's all them folks on the lamb.

Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it, I am sorry for your pain--if you have torn the bugger it can be sewn up with microsurgery so the incision is vurry vurry tiny, but the recovery is still months of gradual exercise. Oy, such tsuris!! BBW has just completed recovering from it, and hers was a good eight months back.

Well, not at all, sir; I was going to comment on the vast improvement in your talent of late, but that's just because , aside from old Sam Woodworth's The Old Oaken Bucket, I still have to track down the original owners of those talents. I don't know why I bother trying to chastise your pilfering ways. You told us from the start you used an inveterate fence.

Oh. nicely done. It gives me great pleasure to set aside my niggling suspicions and revel in the professed originality of your fluent lines. Such wit and insight has ne'er before been claimed or asserted in all of Mudcat land!!

Stilly, I've send some of the Legion boys over to keep her company. They're bringing a few jugs of "stuff" and a "load of sauerkraut and some of them limboorger cheeses ol' Josh had socked away." So she'll have food, drink, and sometimes-good company.

Well, it looks like we all stayed away a lot longer than we needed to. And I read over on one of Max's threads that Claire Bear actually loaded the entire MOAB thread on her computer so she could read it while Mudcat was down.

I guess she expected the 'cat to be away for a month, at least. How long do you think it might take someone to read this thing, from the beginning? Hell, it's taken use years to write it.

I wasn't going to say it because I didn't want to be responsible for the consequences, but now I don't care. Sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and let the cowchips fall where they may.